Dust in the Rafters
by Harkpad
Summary: This time when he speaks his voice is a whisper. "I bet you didn't know I started that young, Phil." . . . "You didn't 'start young' at anything except defending yourself and others from harmful people." Phil and Natasha talk Clint through a panic attack. Pre-Avengers. Friendship. Warnings for child abuse, violence, and mention of rape.


**A/N: Major thanks to my beta, dysprositos. This was a tangled mess until she got hold of it. More Clint back story, and more friendship between my three favorite SHIELD agents. **

**Please be warned for serious child abuse, mention of rape, and violence. Someday I'll write a story where Clint has a calm, quiet back story (I've read several good ones by others), but not today.**

* * *

Fuck if it isn't happening right in the middle of a mission briefing.

Clint feels his breath getting short and he rubs his suddenly sweating palms against the grain of his pants under the table. He can feel the tremors starting, too, his shoulders shuddering slightly, and he knows someone is going to notice. He bends his head over his notes and tries to take a deep breath, closing his eyes.

He needs to calm the fuck down. There isn't anything threatening here. He is _fine_. Phil is four chairs away, leading the briefing, and Nat is sitting next to him taking notes and watching attentively. This is familiar. Safe. He opens his eyes and breathes deeply again, but the air has to fight its way into his lungs, his throat threatening to close, and he _needs_ to calm down.

He can't.

It's been almost a year since his last attack, which is definitely an improvement, but right now that barely registers. He can practically smell the dust of the attic he hid in the first time it happened, when he was nine and living with the Stantons in Des Moines. He can always smell dust when an attack happens, even if he is sitting in a clean, sleek conference room at SHIELD headquarters.

Sometimes it's dust that triggers an attack, sometimes a guy wearing just the right color of brown button down shirt, and sometimes it doesn't take anything but a moment of insecurity for it to start. Clint isn't all that insecure anymore; he has a _place_, god damn it, but if there's just a moment, that's all it takes on the wrong day.

Today he's just so god damned _tired_. The mission briefing is following hard on the heels of his quarterly mandatory psych review, and yesterday he came off a three-week long, pain in the ass mission where they'd lost a guy. Clint didn't know him very well (Michael Lawson, thirty-two years old from Massachusetts, liked to play solitaire with real cards in the mess hall, sparred better than anyone Clint had seen in years), but his loss was a bit of dumb luck, and Clint fucking _hates_ luck.

It was luck that had landed him at the Stanton's house to live after their first year in the foster system.

Luck had let Clint walk in on Larry Stanton one day after school and find him slapping a neighbor kid across the cheek and then swearing Clint to secrecy, because he really didn't want to have to hurt Clint or Barney because Clint couldn't keep his stupid mouth shut.

Luck let Stanton catch Clint stealing two dollars from his wallet one day because Clint hadn't had anything of his own since his parents died and he really wanted the newest comic that he'd heard the kids talking about at school. Stanton made Clint give the money back and then beat bruises onto his torso where a t-shirt would carefully hide them.

Even what some might consider good luck didn't really count for that in his experience (sure he got away from Stanton thanks to it, sure he was lucky the circus was in town when he and Barney ran, but both of those things earned him a life on the run, a life as a fucking killer-for-hire until SHIELD found him too many years later), so Clint hates luck and does his level best to keep it out of every equation in his world.

He might be a pain in the ass in the field when he's on the comms or after a mission when he's all pent up energy and stress, and he tends to bounce off of the walls or whoever happens to be in his proximity, but no one can say he isn't a thorough planner or that he doesn't pay attention at briefings. He throws scenario after scenario at his op leader so that everyone is prepared for every situation.

Luck won't get in on his watch if he can help it.

Now, though, in his weariness and psych telling him he is doing well when come on, _Lawson_, and the quick turnaround of missions and fear of _what if he can't stop the bad luck again_, now all he can smell is dust and all he can feel is dread and he's not thinking of scenarios, or planning, or even being an agent at all. He's trying not to draw attention to himself with his deep breaths, and he's trying to figure out how to get the hell out of this briefing.

He feels Nat's hand on his thigh and opens his eyes, glancing over at her. She raises an eyebrow and looks worried. She's seen one of his attacks before, but it's been years. She'd had to drag him out of a dusty room in a mark's house, had to hold his shoulders against the wall and her hand across his mouth – it was the only time an attack interfered with a mission and she was there to get him through it, having his back in a way that she hadn't done before. He's managed to conceal the last few attacks from her, though, and she probably doesn't know what is going on now. She'll cover for him, though, if she has to.

She doesn't.

"We'll take a thirty minute break. Go grab some lunch," Phil says, his voice cutting in and his eyes roaming the room and casually landing on Clint. Phil knows what's going on.

Toward the end of Clint's first year at SHIELD, Phil found out about the attacks. "Barton, breathe," he had said, crouching down next to Clint as he crammed himself into the corner of the bathroom stall he'd run to. He'd been covered in dust from a warehouse at the end of a mission and it was so bad that his vision kept whiting out and rotting attic floorboards creaked in his head and stale smelling boxes of mothballed clothes pummeled his senses. He'd shoved his chair back with a clank and had bolted from the room right as Phil had turned the lights on after a short presentation.

Everyone had watched him leave in confusion, and Phil had followed. Today is no different in that regard.

Clint shoves his chair back and strides from the room without a glance at anyone, wrapping his arms around himself in a desperate attempt not to completely fall apart in the hallways. He's breathing hard – dust in his nostrils, has to shake it off –and he keeps his eyes to the ground. He knows Phil will give him a minute's head start so that it doesn't seem like he's chasing him out of the meeting.

Besides, Phil knows where he's going anyway.

His legs carry him instinctively as his breathing speeds up and his shoulders start to all-out shake. He isn't looking at anything as he mindlessly keys in his code and shoves the door to Phil's office open. He shuts it behind him, but that's all he manages before his knees buckle and he slides to the spotless, dust-free floor.

"_You're a pain in my ass, Clint!" _Mr. Stanton growls in his memory, and Clint covers his ears as he sinks to the floor of Phil's office, his back against the door, feeling dusty air scrape into his lungs as he tries to slow his breathing.

"_I'm gonna make you feel every bit of the pain in the ass you are, you little punk!" Stanton whispered, his voice as thick and dark as the attic he chased Clint into. A single bulb hung from the wooden rafters and Stanton flicked it on, illuminating the sneer on his face as Clint cowered in the corner, breathing in dust._

Clint pulls at his hair, feels his lungs fighting to draw a breath, hears himself gasp harshly, and feels Phil try to open the door behind him.

Phil pushes against the door behind him. "Clint, open the door. Come on, Clint. You have to move." Worry fills Phil's voice and darkens it, and the darkness sends Clint backward in his mind again as he rocks against the door frantically.

_The bulb shone in the attic and the air was thick and musty, and Clint felt the wall behind him and scraped his small hand along it, feeling splinters pierce his skin, keeping him alert, keeping him from retreating too far into himself. He had to stay on guard against Stanton now, couldn't lose himself right now the way he sometimes did when he'd had too much of the yelling, when his instinct told him to hide, hide, hide. As his hands scraped the wooden wall, he felt something along the wall he'd never felt before. A long nail had come loose, and Clint's hand passed over it, feeling it jiggle in its hole. He grasped it, felt that it was at least four inches long and sensed an opportunity, and he wrapped his fingers around it and pulled it slowly from its place, placing it between his fingers. _

* * *

Phil pushes against his office door as Natasha comes up behind him. Fear is climbing up his throat and he needs to get to Clint. When this had last happened, a year ago, he was right there with him and felt lucky that he had been, wrestling a knife out of Clint's hands and holding him against the wall of Clint's quarters until his breathing finally evened out and his eyes refocused. That attack had lasted a good half hour, culminating with the knife unexpectedly in Clint's hands and panic in his eyes.

"What's going on, Phil?" Natasha demands, stepping up beside him.

He looks over at her as he shoves the door again, Clint's dead weight working against him. "Panic attack, PTSD flashback. He said you knew about them," he grinds out between his teeth.

She nods and her eyes widen a fraction. "I didn't know he was still getting them." She leans against the door, too, and shoves without being asked. The door opens a few inches.

"Clint, come on," Phil pleads. "Just move a little, okay? Just a little."

"He's not hearing us," Natasha says a moment later, out of breath from shoving at the door.

Phil knows this. He thinks he knows who Clint is hearing instead of them, who he's seeing instead of seeing Phil's office, Clint's safe space. He doesn't know why Clint's seeing him now, or how intensely, but he knows of Larry Stanton's role in these panic attacks. He knows that Stanton was the first man to beat Clint unconscious, knows he constantly changed the rules on Clint so he could never predict when the anger would come, who forced Clint to hide his pain and bruises from everyone, even Barney, who Stanton used to threaten Clint. Even at nine, Clint was so loyal that he took all of this so that Barney wouldn't get hurt, even though Barney eventually did find out.

Phil knows more about Larry Stanton than Clint even thinks he knows. He even knows what Barney Barton eventually had to do to help his little brother. He knows all of this, and he knows Clint can't hear them now. He and Natasha give a heavy push against the door and he shoves his way through the small gap they opened.

Phil shoves his way through the door and stumbles a little, falling into the room as Natasha follows close behind. He pulls himself up and turns, seeing Clint scramble back against the door again, inadvertently pushing it closed. He pushes his palms against the floor and Phil sees his eyes, wild and bright and unfocused, his hair disheveled and his black t-shirt pulled partway out of his waistband. He can hear Clint's labored breaths, air sucked over his clenched teeth, and he takes a step toward him, hoping he can finally get through to him, his own hands raised to try and make Clint feel safer.

It doesn't work.

Clint launches himself at Phil, his compact force knocking Phil backward onto the floor, and Clint wraps his fingers around Phil's throat, his gravelly voice snarling "Not this time, you hear? You don't get me this time." He squeezes as Phil presses his hands against Clint's chest frantically and Natasha grabs Clint's shoulders and pulls, yelling "Clint! Clint, stop!" and the two of them, Phil pushing and Natasha pulling, manage to roll Clint to the floor where he lands hard on his back, air rushing out of his lungs.

Phil feels panic running through his veins, and he watches as Clint stares at the ceiling, trying to pull in a good breath. He leans over Clint but keeps his hands off of him. "Clint, look at me. Please, you're okay. You're safe and he's gone. You're safe, and Natasha is here, and I'm here, and we're not going to let anyone hurt you. No one is going to hurt you, Clint," he finished gently. If the ghost Clint was fighting was forceful, angry, Phil would be the opposite.

He watched as Clint's eyes focused again, as his breaths evened out, as he closed his eyes against whatever was haunting him.

* * *

_The nail slid into Clint's hand as Stanton breached the stairwell into the attic, and Clint looked up at him, breath racing and hands shaking. Larry Stanton was a large man who looked like he'd probably played offensive line on the college football team, and he had balding brown hair and steely blue eyes. He had big, beefy hands and wore a brown button down shirt over a white t-shirt and beige corduroy pants that were too long. His hair was greasy and his eyes were wild, sending icy slivers of fear running through Clint's chest. He gripped the nail harder._

_"You did it this time, Clint," Stanton slurred, as he stepped in front of the terrified nine year-old. "You've got it coming now, you nosy little shit." _

_And Clint knew he was right. _

_He'd felt his stomach drop when he'd pushed the rickety door to the garage open to go find a screwdriver and instead had found Mr. Stanton with his pants down and a teenage girl cowering in the corner. Clint had stood there, a vague feeling of sick swirling in his stomach as the girl screeched and Stanton had whirled, yelling "Get the fuck out!" as soon as he saw Clint. Clint hadn't known what to do, hadn't known how to help her, and he had done the only thing he could think of –he'd mashed the button to the garage door opener and then run, hearing Stanton's string of curses as he bolted to the attic. _

_Now Stanton had a knife in his hand, and Clint was the one cowering. But suddenly, he thought of the nail, thought of what it could do, thought of how Stanton wouldn't be expecting anything, that never fighting back before could work to his advantage now. He gripped the nail tighter, felt the sweat streaming down his forehead, and took a deep breath as Stanton stepped closer with his knife raised and his face contorted in an ugly sneer. _

Clint didn't let Stanton win then, and now Phil's calm voice seeps into his consciousness. The dusty rafters fade away and the clean, stark lines of Phil's office come back into view. The sharp clap of Stanton's work boots against the wood floor of the attic is replaced by the small fountain on the corner of Phil's coffee table. The smell of wood and mothballs is replaced by the clean, fresh scent of the plants that Phil tends to around the room, and the sight of Stanton looming over him is replaced by Natasha sitting back on her heels a few feet away staring at him with worry in her eyes.

He sucks in another ragged breath and sits up, pulls his knees to his chest and drops his head down, feeling the shame and embarrassment roll over him again. He'd really lost it this time. He had threatened Phil, and if Natasha hadn't - he lets out a small groan.

Phil is there. "Shhh, it's okay, Clint. You're okay. You're back. Come on, look at me," he says quietly, his soft voice a balm on Clint's ears as the echoes of Stanton's oily voice still ring in his head. He feels himself start to shake again, so he wraps his arms around himself tighter, little tremors rippling through his muscles. He looks up at Phil, though.

"I'm sorry, Phil," he says, his voice gravelly, and he looks over at Natasha. "I'm sorry," he repeats, quietly. The shaking gets worse, and Phil scoots close to Clint and offers his arm, held up without touching Clint, and Clint leans into it, trembling and cold. Natasha moves close, too, and Clint ends up between them, their arms linked across his shoulders, holding him tight.

He shudders beneath them, drops his head to his chest and sees Stanton again, looming.

_Clint gripped the nail tightly in his small, nine year-old hand and he ignored the sweat, ignored the fear coursing through his small body and he lunged with all his strength, catching the big man off guard. Clint plunged the nail into his chest, right where he thought Stanton's heart should be. He yelled as Stanton swung wildly with the knife, missing Clint's shoulder, and then Stanton's knees buckled and he went down, blood streaming from where the nail was embedded in his chest. Clint scrambled backward, pressing against the wall, trying to make himself small, trying to burrow away from the horrid scene. _

He is burrowing into Phil's side now, eyes clenched tight again, breathing speeding up again. He feels Phil and Natasha pull him close, together, and both are talking softly in his ears, and he knows he is scaring them, but he can't get the smell of dusty rafters out of his nose or the sight of Stanton twitching on the floor of the attic out of his eyes. They hold him, though, and they talk softly and squeeze gently and assure him that this is now and he is safe with them and finally, finally the dusty attic fades entirely from his sight and he feels himself go limp in the arms of his closest friends, and they are guarding him, holding him, waiting for him patiently like they _always_ do.

* * *

Phil can feel it as Clint manages, finally, to calm his breathing, to unfurl from their arms, to run an exhausted hand over his face and lean back to see them properly, and he thinks it might be over now; he catches Natasha's eye and she nods, clearly thinking the same thing. Clint's hair is sweaty and he still has his arms folded across his chest defensively, but his eyes have lost that wild look, and the tremors are fading.

"Where are you, Clint?" Phil asks gently; he needs to ground Clint here, now.

Clint looks around and settles his gaze on Phil a little bit desperately. "In your office," he says, his voice still shaking.

"Right, and do you remember what you were doing before this started?" Phil asks, even toned.

Clint looks over at Natasha and smiles weakly. "Sitting in a briefing with Nat and trying to stay focused." He pauses and sighs. "It didn't work."

Natasha stands gracefully and moves to the bathroom off of Phil's office and runs water in a glass and comes back and gives it to Clint. Clint takes it and drinks, closing his eyes again. Phil puts his hand against Clint's lower back, rubbing gently. After a minute he asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"

He has heard about a lot of Clint's trauma and knows a lot about what sets him off, but this was so bad, so real, and so violent.

Clint looks up at him, eyes searching Phil's as if he's trying to figure out how much Phil really wants to hear. He wraps his arms around his knees again and puts his chin on his arm. He looks lost for a moment and then he meets Phil's gaze and shifts to meet Natasha's as well. "I had a foster home when I was nine. It was the second one after my parents had died." He stops, swallows, and says, very matter-of-fact, "The husband of the woman who looked after us was Larry Stanton" He looks at Phil. "I told you about him." Phil nods. To Natasha Clint simply says, "He was a bastard," and Phil knows that Natasha understands all that implies.

But Phil realizes that he's going to give them more today. As bad as today was, he's telling them more than he's told before. Phil feels privileged and a little sick at the same time.

Clint continues, resting his chin on his knees and mumbling a little bit. "I caught him trying to rape a girl one day and messed it up. He chased me to the attic and - " his voice breaks and he pulls in a shuddering breath, looking at Phil and Natasha as if he's asking them for something.

There's pleading in his eyes, and Phil doesn't understand.

Natasha says, "You don't have to tell us, Clint," and she is right. Phil doesn't have to know, but suddenly he feels like he _wants_ to know, that if he can know about this then he can know Clint more fully, and he always wishes for that when it comes to Clint and Natasha.

Clint shakes his head. "I want to," he says desperately, "I do." He suddenly pushes himself to his feet and begins to pace. "He was going to really hurt me. He had a knife in his hand and he was - so angry. I could hear it in his voice. He was going to hurt me worse than ever and even though I'd hidden there before, I found a nail that I'd never noticed before, and - and I killed him with it." He was rushing through the words at the end.

"I was _nine_ and I killed a man," Clint finishes, and his voice sounds incredulous, like he can hardly believe he did it, even now. "I killed him with a four inch carpentry nail I found in the wall. And now when shit luck happens or I smell wood dust or hear a voice like his or see a big man with a weapon in his hand, I see Larry Stanton. I can usually get it to go away," he says, desperate. "I can usually - " his voice breaks again. This time when he speaks his voice is a whisper. "I bet you didn't know I started that young, Phil."

Phil just stares at the young man in front of him with so much pain in his voice. Phil _didn't_ know. He thought he knew what had happened to Larry Stanton, but he was wrong, and his stomach churns with disgust at how wrong he was. "I thought, _we_ thought -" He breaks off at the horrified look on Clint's face.

"SHIELD knew about this?" Clint asks as his voice rises and he stops pacing. "_What_ did you think?"

Phil stood and moved close to Clint as Natasha crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. He took a deep breath. "We knew that you and Barney lived with the Stantons, and we knew that you both disappeared after Larry Stanton was killed violently in his att-" He stopped and ran a hand over his face. The attic. The dusty, cluttered attic. Clint hated dust, had been triggered by a cluttered warehouse at least once, and kept his own apartment spotless and uncluttered. He looked at Clint and stepped closer, seeing Clint's hard glare and feeling it pierce his chest.

"We thought _Barney_ killed him. When we started to piece together your history when we decided to recruit you, we assumed Barney killed him. No evidence was found at the scene; it was left as an unsolved homicide, and we just . . . assumed." He steps close and puts his hand on Clint's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Clint looks over at Natasha and then turns and sinks into Phil's couch, curling into a ball at the end of it. He doesn't look at them and says quietly, "It was me."

Phil shakes his head and sits down next to him. He says, as gentle as he can, "It doesn't change anything. You were loyal and good and after you killed him, you and Barney ran to the circus and you tried again. You tried _again_ at doing the right things, and even when you ended up on the wrong side years later you came with me to SHIELD and tried again. You _kept_ trying until you got here, Clint. What you did to him doesn't matter anymore."

"He deserved it," Natasha adds darkly, sitting down on the floor in front of Clint.

Phil nods and leans over, pulling Clint out of a ball and drawing him into his own shoulder, wrapping his arm around him gently. Natasha scoots onto the couch on his other side and leans into him. Phil feels Clint shudder and then relax into them.

"You were defending yourself, Clint. Defending yourself against an evil man who had hurt you and countless other children. You didn't 'start young' at anything except defending yourself and others from harmful people." Phil squeezes Clint, and Clint sinks into him and Natasha and they stay, pressed together, for a few minutes.

Clint speaks again, finally, his voice thin and strained. "No one knows. I didn't even tell Barney what I'd done. I just told him we had to leave, and he had heard about the circus. I've never told _anyone_."

Phil looks over at Natasha, who nods simply and says, "Now we know and it's all right, Clint. I started young, too, and my cause was not so… noble."

Phil hears the sadness in her voice and he looks at her sharply, but it's Clint who answers. "There was nothing noble about it. We were both kids doing what we had to do to survive. I wasn't thinking about helping anyone, even if I did, in the end." He sighs and leans forward. "It's done. It's over. I just need to get it out of my head."

Phil looks at his two broken agents, the broken ones who hold _him_ together like no one ever has before, and he smiles. "What you need to do is help me plan this mission. Both of you. Can you come back now, Clint?" The 'I need you' is unspoken, but as Clint looks up at him and grins tiredly; Phil knows they both hear it.

Natasha stands and reaches her hands down for both of the men on the couch and they grasp her hands and she pulls them up. They hold on a minute longer than they have to, and then they head back to the briefing room.

Clint grills Phil about the mission until every single possible scenario has been thought of, and the mission goes off without a hitch, and luck doesn't get in the way, this time.


End file.
